American International Group will open an asset management company in India this year, according to Ambassador Frank Wisner, vice-chairman, external affairs, AIG.
"We are opening this year a new company in the consumer financial field, consumer finance and credit cards," Wisner said. "We are moving right now to open this asset management company," he added.
Admitting that AIG is joining a seemingly crowded field, Wisner said that when one reflects on the depth of India's savings capacity and search for assets, the applications of those assets and savings has vast potential.
AIG, he said, is also looking at 'huge opportunities' in many other sectors as well. "We also recognise that India's entry into world market in terms of mineral and hydrocarbon imports all represents opportunities," Wisner said while delivering the keynote at the US-India Partnership Summit 2006 in New York.
"For those like us who are active in the trading field, see considerable prospects for profit. Same is true about the real estate market where India is beginning to develop its potential," he said.
"For a company like AIG there is a terrific horizon of opportunity and I say more the merrier, the more the competition India is discovering, the better for India and better for all of us," Wisner said.
"We really are at a break point in the sense that American business is now involved in India's life in a much deeper and much more important way than has even been the case before," he added.
Wisner said India's story is not simply about Indian business growing in India and foreigners who are investing are doing well in India.
"Increasingly the Indian business story is a global story as Indians move into the merger and acquisition fields and create opportunity for themselves in European and American markets," he said.
"This is a very exciting time. It is a time I would argue is different than any moment in the past. It is different because Indian growth today is not driven by the government but by the private sector and the private sector is confident," he said, adding that the government is increasingly playing a background role trying to facilitate a business environment and adept it to the exigencies of a modern market economy.
